


tell me everything's okay

by johnny-and-dora (sian_jpg)



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, One-Shot, during/post 5x20, rated s for so many emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 14:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14595018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian_jpg/pseuds/johnny-and-dora
Summary: "Rosa in danger, Rosa with her life on the line, Rosa who he could easily never see again – oh God, what if she’s hurt, wounded or worse – and he can’t, he can’t just sit there numb and take orders and do paperwork and pretend like everything’s going to be fine when his entire world is on the verge of crumbling around him. Again."or the one where, on the way to brooklyn heights, jake realises maybe there are some flaws in the "eyes closed, head first, can't lose" mentality after all.(during/post 5x20)





	tell me everything's okay

Jake slams the car door behind him and drives away as fast as he can before anything can change his mind, blood boiling red, eyes fixed firmly on the road. 

_Don’t think about it._

It’s not like he doesn’t understand what Holt’s saying – he does, he always does. Maybe if one of his best friends, one of his _family_ wasn’t in danger, he might actually stop to listen. He knows that it could be any officer out there in Brooklyn Heights, anyone of them responding to that callout, and they would just doing be their duty, protecting citizens from danger, putting their life on the line. 

That’s the job they signed up to do, part of the danger of each day written into the small print. He knows that, clear as he knows the sound of his best friend’s voice, clear as he knows her badge number. They all do. 

But it’s not just anyone that’s responding to that active shooter scene – it’s _Rosa._

Rosa in danger, Rosa with her life on the line, Rosa who he could easily never see again – _oh God, what if she’s hurt, wounded or worse_ – and he can’t, he can’t just sit there numb and take orders and do paperwork and pretend like everything’s going to be fine when his entire world is on the verge of crumbling around him. Again.

_Don’t think about it._

He can’t just sit and watch Terry slowly and nervously crush his computer equipment or Charles alternate between obsessively refreshing his phone and staring into space, heart-achingly and unusually quiet. He’s tried, he really has, but he just can’t handle it. 

(Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he wonders if this was what it was like for them when he and Rosa were in prison, and he can’t bear to feel his heart break all over again.)

He just can’t sit there and compartmentalise it all, every terrible what-if and world-changing imaginary phone call - this is catastrophically worse than the bra in the backseat of his dad’s car. There just isn’t enough imaginary boxes or drawers or compartments in the universe to hold everything churning inside of him now, the fire and the fear and the constant rerun in his head of his friend’s gruff voice firmly muttering _“show me going”_ , cracked and distorted by Holt’s scanner.

_Don’t think about it._

Jake doesn’t want to shove all of this down the proverbial couch cushions of his mind anymore and find it in a panic attack three weeks later with some loose change. He needs to deal with it _now_. And if that means dealing with the commissioner later, dealing with Holt later, then he’s more than willing. He _has_ to go, regardless of what Holt says. 

“She’s going to be okay.” He half-whispers to himself, at the next red light that takes a century to turn green, hands trembling with nervous energy that’s practically electric, tapping irregular jolting rhythms on the steering wheel. He tries (and fails) to keep his breathing steady. 

“She’s Rosa, and she’s a badass, and she’s going to be fine. We all are.”

Jake just wants to scream, a little bit, maybe cry a little bit more. Most of all, he wants to run, straight towards the danger like he’s a fresh-faced, mildly egocentric first year detective again who’s convinced he’s immortal. He knows, really, that he’s being impulsive and reckless and dangerously stupid, but he can’t afford to care – he just needs to know that Rosa’s going to make it home, so they can refuse to talk about it and drink in silence and everything can be normal again. 

God, does he ache for some normality.

The traffic is hell but he can’t be more than ten minutes out from Brooklyn Heights when his senses start overloading, breathing heavy and hot, because sitting in the precinct means being a terrible witness to everyone else’s anxieties but sitting alone in the car makes it impossible not to confront his own. He clenches his jaw so tightly it hurts.

_Don’t think about it. She’s going to be okay._

Maybe it’s because he’s had enough tragedy, more than enough melodrama for one lifetime. Maybe he’s tired of it – every last piece of himself he’s lost to something he couldn’t change, to Figgis, to Hawkins, to Romero, to Murphy. Maybe he’s not strong enough to lose another one.

He’s _definitely_ not strong enough to not be able to smile at the sight of Rosa in a bridesmaid dress, to not dance with Rosa drunkenly at the reception, to not have Rosa there as part of the happiest day of his life, scheduled for about two short weeks from now.  
The thought alone is enough to make him sick to his stomach.

And then, somewhat inevitably, he goes cold – because thinking about his wedding means finally opening the floodgates and finally letting it in the tsunami of thoughts of Amy, the love of his life, his sun and moon and stars, the most important person in the whole entire cosmos. 

His almost-wife - his family, his home. 

_Don’t think - God, what would have happened if it had been her?_

He almost immediately burns red-hot as the sun again as quickly as he turned cold, like he’s short-circuiting, and has to pull over sharply before he crashes, turning into the first dingy back alleyway he can find and putting his head in his hands, breathing heavily. _God, Amy._

She’d kill him if she knew where he was, what he was planning to do. He hadn’t even thought to talk to her before he went – what if something happened, what if it all went wrong while he was trying to play the hero? What if she lost him and Rosa in the same day? How could he do that to her?

Suddenly, sharply, he’s jolted to the moment between them in the break room, her hand softly and anxiously playing with the collar of his jacket, the heart-breakingly brave smile she tries to put on to show she’s strong. How she means absolutely everything to him. 

The millions of things left unsaid yet still understood in the small gap between them – _“what if it had been you and I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you and I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you”_ and the small, tiny, impossibly weighted phrases they actually exchange – _“I love you.” “I love you, too.”_ The weight in his chest, the heavy sigh as he watches her leave.

And he does, love her, so much. He loves Amy with every inch of his body, every fibre of his being, every cell in his biology. Everything inside him gravitates towards her like she’s sending a magnetic pulse, like she’s the centre of his universe (which she practically is), and he can’t wait to spend the rest of their lives together – so how can he do this? How can he risk drastically shortening his life by doing something stupid and getting himself hurt...or worse?

_Amy_. All he wants to do is grab her and wrap her in his arms and hold her so tightly for the rest of their lives so that nothing can tear them apart ever again.

He can’t do this. He can’t lose Rosa, not today, not ever, especially not now. But - he also can’t let everyone down; he can’t let Amy down by being thoughtless and irresponsible, by not protecting her, by throwing himself in headfirst into the fight without once stopping to think about the consequences. 

He’s better than this now – _she’s_ made him better than this.

Yeah, trying to be the hero might have worked for him when he didn’t have anyone else to really care about but himself and he threw himself headfirst into everything without thinking twice. It worked, when all he cared about was playing out his favourite action movie tropes and catching bad guys, saving the day. 

But things are so astronomically different now, for better or for worse. He can’t...as much as he hates it, he can’t just internalise all this grief and twist it into some kind of tragic back-story, shove it down to cry about later and deal with it by doing something crazy and impulsive and destructive. Those days have been over for a while.

He can’t just go in guns blazing and assume that he’ll come away unscathed, that he’ll save the day and everything will work out, and he knows that – experience, hardship, tragedy (and maybe, just a tiny bit, genuine love, support and compassion) has worn his naivety thin and (hopefully) deflated his ego. Maybe even made him a better man, or at least want to be one.

Jake’s not a superhero. Not even really a regular kind of hero – he’s just a guy doing his job. But soon, so unbelievably and excitingly and tangibly soon, he’s going to be a husband. Hopefully, one day, he might even be a father. What would happen to Amy, to the squad – to his family, to everyone he cares about, if the worst happened? 

What would she be doing if she knew he was even considering throwing himself into the crosshairs with no plan, no backup, not even a goodbye? 

And, even if he and Rosa both made it out alive, how could either of them ever forgive him for even considering risking everything in the first place? He can’t be the one to let them down like that. Which means...

He can’t go.

He tries Rosa’s cell again but it just goes straight to voicemail, so he throws his phone carelessly into the passenger seat and bangs his head against the steering wheel. There’s a terrifying helpless feeling in the light-headed panic of his head as he finally accepts there’s nothing he can actually do about what happens now, one that reminds him so horribly of the longest, worst eight weeks of his life. 

He takes a breath. He allows a few silent, hot, stinging tears, tries to swallow what feels like a stone lodged in his throat. Allows a few tidal waves of fear, of gut-wrenching uncertainty. One, two, three waves of grief before he has to sit up like his stomach isn’t tied into a thousand knots and breathe normally again. 

“She’s going to be okay.” He says, firmer than last time, repeating it over and over like some stupid mantra until he’s drilled into his head, until he just might believe it. After all the years he’s known her, he must have learnt by now that Rosa is stupidly tough, and smart – maybe the closest thing to an actual hero (at the very least, some kind of a scary badass vigilante).

She’s not some damsel in distress that needs saving – she’d probably punch him for thinking that even for a second. If Rosa was here, she’d tell him that he was being dumb and that he needed to go smash a plate or burn something.

Yes, of course he’s scared out of his mind that she might not come back, but he can’t – and shouldn’t - count her out yet.

For now, he just feels scared and small and guilty for being such a careless idiot in the first place. He sighs, long and hard, like he’s aged twenty years in the past couple hours, and starts the car up again. It might not be the plan that immortalises him as a John McClane kind of hero, but Holt – as usual, not that he’d ever tell him that – is right. He can help Rosa the most if he’s back at the precinct, supporting everyone else who cares about her as much as he does and helping them all breathe a little easier until she comes home.

He comes as close to smiling as he’s gotten that day when he passes Sal’s on the way back.

***

The pizza – and the valuable moral lesson learnt about the importance of sharing your feelings – doesn’t fix things, doesn’t fill the void slowly gathering in his stomach – but it does help. Finally giving a voice to the fire and the fear, and knowing everyone is going through the same thing, helps.

Seeing Terry’s blood pressure finally return to normal, seeing Charles be distracted enough to make weird comments about the cheese to crust ratio, seeing Holt try his weird way of telling him he did the right thing helps.

Jake breathes out. Breathing semi-regularly again helps, too.

_She’s going to be okay._

He passes Amy briefly in the stairwell, her hair wild, her dark eyes fiercely focused and determined, her usually pristine ironed sergeant’s button up discarded in favour of a toilet water-drenched, soft grey NYPD t-shirt. (She’s radiant.)

There’s that ache for normality again. There’s a thousand things he could – and probably should – say; he kind of wants to make fun of her, kind of wants to kiss her, kind of wants to hold her close and spill out everything he is desperately trying to keep inside of him even though it burns so badly in his chest. But she’s tired, and anxious enough already, and wielding a wrench with a determined, chaotic wildness that both heightens his fear and mildly turns him on. 

He doesn’t particularly want his angry and emotionally compromised fiancee (they’re getting married, and he loves her, and she is so beautiful) to be holding a wrench when he has to tell her about almost going to Brooklyn Heights. So he just gives her a small smile, squeezes her hand gently as they stop for a moment. _I’m here if you need me._

“You okay?” They both know it’s an empty question, but it still helps. Amy sighs, long and hard. 

“Dealing with it. You?”

“Yeah. I’m...I’m trying, yeah.” Neither of them can think of what to say for a moment, and there’s that terribly familiar weight again. That tiny, horrific gap again - everything they’re not saying, everything he’ll choke out later when they both can’t sleep and he comes undone again with her head lying on his chest, right over his heart.

“She’ll...” Amy begins, but she trails off, leaving all the terrible conclusions and what-ifs and maybe hanging they can’t bear to even think in the air. 

“I know. She’ll be okay, Ames.”  
“I know.” It’s little more than an echo of their last conversation, but it still helps. She smiles weakly, nodding, and he squeezes her hand again before he lets it drop, letting her get back to kicking the crap out of Rosa’s broken toilet or however she’s trying to deal with this terrible, awful, just really shitty situation. 

Jake goes back to helping Charles with his paperwork, goes back to trying to breathe normally, trying so very very hard to keep the ground under his feet from crumbling beneath him.

_She’s going to be okay._

*** 

Rosa, after all, is okay. 

He can’t really describe the overwhelming rush of relief when he sees her again, standing as casually if she’d just been in the evidence lockup the whole time. He can only describe it in memories - just like the anxiety, it’s all too familiar, and he’s hit with fragments of holding Amy properly in his arms again for the first time after prison, of calling his mom, of his first day back at the Nine-Nine. 

He can’t help it – he hugs her tightly with no regard for her no-contact rule, and the way she hugs him back tells him she doesn’t really mind. 

When she leaves with Gina, he can’t keep the smile off his face, and finally, finally exhales properly for the first time after one of the longest days of his life. There are things unsaid between them too, of course, but they can be left unsaid for now – at least for a little while. He knows he’ll hear it when Rosa’s ready, if he ever hears about it at all. 

Drinking in silence might just fill the craving for normality for a little while, anyway. At least until the next impossible situation the universe throws them that they have to untangle comes along – and then they’ll untangle it, together, and move on, like they always do. 

The small, terrifying, horrific, weighted gap between him and Amy closes the second he sees her again as she walks into the bullpen – he jumps up from his desk at once as she practically runs into his arms, She’s smiling but he can feel her shaking as he pulls her closer. He presses a quick, chaste kiss to the top of her head. They’re all okay. Everyone’s okay. 

__They’re all going to be okay._ _

And they’ll talk about it, later. Maybe he’ll pull her away to one side at Shaw’s, maybe they’ll talk on the car ride home. Maybe they’ll come undone together later that night, or collapse into each other and spill out all the fear and fire and the _what if it had been you_ as soon as they get home. 

Maybe he’ll confess in the earlier hours of the morning when neither of them can sleep, or maybe they’ll be so exhausted that they’ll fall asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow, and he’ll wake her up with Polish pancakes and coffee with too much sugar, and they’ll talk. 

Whenever it happens, he’s certain of one thing - he’ll tell her the truth. 

And Amy will be angry, and he’ll be desperately and vulnerably and so very, sincerely sorry, and she’ll know that. They’ll spend the day on the couch, talking, crying, eventually laughing, and eventually loving again. 

They will feel so, so much, carry so many burdens and what-if’s and thoughts they won’t know whether they’re strong enough to take - but they’ll do it all together, within the safety and comfort of each other’s arms. Then he’ll weakly attempt to make a joke, and she’ll laugh, and they’ll move on, stronger than ever before. 

For better or for worse – as they’ll promise to each other so soon, so unbelievably and excitingly and tangibly soon – he is so deeply, completely and utterly devoted to Amy Santiago, and somehow he just knows they’ll be okay. 

He doesn’t have to be everyone’s superhero – just hers.  
(He’ll tell her that, too, and she’ll laugh at how cheesy he is before kissing him again.) 

(Roughly two short weeks later, he’ll smile widely at the sight of Rosa being part of the happiest day of his life, more chaotic and disastrous and wonderful than he could ever have expected.) 

(And then, as Amy stands in front of him, hair cascading, dark eyes bright and shining with love, a pure, ethereal vision of radiance in a white dress, he’ll forget how to breathe all over again.) 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! i've been in such a terrible writer's block for almost two months now but 'show me going' made me feel so many things i had to write this, if only to low-key compartmentalise my super high cancellation/renewal anxiety whoops
> 
> comments, as always, are super appreciated and loved! come scream and generally keysmash with me about peraltiago over on my tumblr, @johnny-and-dora <3


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